Kallen looks all around her. She had freed the Knightmare from all but a few of the cables. She figured that dropping it without her inside might hinder her plans a bit. She climbs into the back of the Knightmare and plugs in the key.
The big metal beast hums to life, just as it did earlier. She smiles a small self-satisfied smile and starts wiggling the hands of the machine. Once she verified that everything was in order, she engages the float unit and takes a deep breath.
"Here goes nothing."
She pulls out one of the swords off the back of the unit and slices through the remaining cables. The float unit kicks in and the Knightmare starts falling as if in slow motion. Kallen bites her lip. The scanners say that there isn't anything down there, but she wasn't exactly trusting of that reading, since there was nowhere else for them to go to hide. She frowns and pulls out the Varis cannon, then swaps back to the sword.
"I'm going to be in close quarters anyway." She mumbles to herself.
The unit's feet, then legs, torso and arms all successfully end up in the hole. Kallen lets out the breath she's been holding before focusing on the task at hand again.
"Okay. Once I'm down there, I need to look for Lelouch, then Suzaku, then the-"
Something slams into the side of her Knightmare. She head snapped back and forth and a splitting pain appears in her neck.
She rubs the spot and opens the Factospheres to try and figure out what had hit her. The left screens light up with more data, but the right side screens end up with nothing but static, actually losing the old information.
Kallen quickly realizes that whatever had hit her had broken one of the Factospheres. She turns to the right and lets the left sphere compensate. What she finds is a good old fashioned Steel I-beam, suspended from the ceiling by two thick ropes. A third rope is tied to the far end, and holding it in is two mooks desperately hauling the I-beam back towards themselves in an effort to ram her again. Kallen mutters to herself.
"Battering ram. How clever. But all I need is a sword."
She swings her mech's arm and the sword in its grip easily snaps the two cables mounting it to the ceiling. The beam falls the ground and scatters a few more people with guns that Kallen hadn't noticed before. They all had on lab coats and while they are all armed, Kallen can see none of them are familiar with the weapons.
Kallen thinks for a second. "These people, they're like the ones Lelouch executed.
While Kallen hadn't been part of that particular event, the video of an entire city of dead scientists and children of those scientists had been passed to her through one of the four holy swords. These people looked just like those in the video: Frightened, Unable to fight, weak.
Kallen swipes the sword back and forth without hitting anybody. "Okay. None of you look like fighter. Tell me what I want to know, and I promise I won't kill you."
Instantly, all the scientists point their arms in the direction of a big metal door.
Kallen smirks. "If you guys lied to me, I'll be back, and this time, I'll have my Varis cannon out."
Several of the scientists start pointing more fervently at the door previously indicated.
"Okay then," she mutters to herself. "That way."
She raises the sword and shears right through the thick metal that makes up the door. The first thin she notices about the room is that there are tons of people tied up. The second thing is a giant monitor on the screen. The third is that the monitor has Lelouch's face on it-
"-DIE!"
o-o-o-o
Kallen had been inside the pulse that destroyed the Geass back at the old base. Thus, when Suzaku lost his "Live" Geass, Kallen also lost her Original Geass from back when Lelouch was still trying out his powers. That meant that she was vulnerable to Lelouch's attack as well. Unfortunately for her, she drove in right as the command was given.
Her mind retreated in on itself, taking the backseat as his Geass slowly creeps into her mind and tells her to take the gun and pull the trigger. Just take the gun, it's not hard. It isn't. It really isn't.
Kallen is dimly aware of the screens outside her Knightmare displaying two faces now, Gregor's and Lelouch's. Gregor is saying something that Kallen can almost hear, but she recognizes it as a taunt.
Lelouch seems to be completely unaffected though.
Kallen is unable to resist any longer and her right hand brings a pistol to her head. "Below her shots are fired and blood starts filling the air in spurts.
The barrel of the gun creeps into her mouth, and she closes her eyes as she resigns herself to death.
A pulse of bluish energy passes through the slit of her eyes.
Kallen suddenly wakes up and finds that she had somehow, without realizing it, she had put a gun in her mouth. She drops it and looks around her in a panic. The last thing she remembered was barging into this room-
Is that Lelouch on the screen? Did he just try to kill her with his Geass? She looks around through the left and side of her screen. There are a lot of tied up people on the ground… and a lot of dead guards and blood.
Gregor's voice reaches her ears. "And now that you've killed all your comrades… Wait, when did that Knightmare enter the room?"
L2 smiles. "It's been there since I gave the order. Kallen, would you be as kind as to release their prisoners?"
Kallen nods dumbly though she couldn't be seen by the screens. Above her, the speakers continue to loudly enhance the voices of L2 and Gregor.
"Wait, ut you gave the command for everyone to die! Nobody should have survived that!"
"Well, Gregor, I'll have you know that you did me a favor. All of my people are tied up and bound with one exception. They had no way handy to kill themselves. Your troops, on the other hand had perfectly good weapons just ready to kill themselves with. Then, Jeremiah Gottwald used a unique ability that cancels all Geasses in the area to rid all of my people of the harmful order."
L2's face splits into a wide grin.
Gregor's turns an interesting shade of burgundy.
Kallen Struggles to remove the ropes of the nearest people to her, and among them is Nunnally. "Nunnally!"
"Kallen! You're safe! I was so worried!"
Kallen grins. "You were the one who was tied up."
Nunnally rolls her eyes. "As long as L2 and Suzaku are alright, He'll save us somehow."
Kallen grins. "Let's get everyone up and moving. We don't know when reinforcements will arrive."
Nunnally nods. "Alright!"
o-o-o-o
L2 steps away from his podium, ignoring the spluttering of his double for the past twelve years. He presses a few buttons on the elevator and it starts to descend.
"L2!" Screams Gregor, maxing out the speakers and adding a fair amount of static to the noise. "I will not allow you to get away with this!"
"I already have." L2 says as his face slips beneath the edge of the floor.
Gregor's bleating is cut off by the floor's door replacing and locking. Hopefully, Suzaku didn't need the lift to get down, seeing as L2 had taken the only ride out.
He ponders his next move as the floor descends slowly. His initial plan was shot to pieces, but his backup plan was still solid. He closes his eyes and chants the words that had occupied his mind for the past fifteen or so years.
"I need to eradicate all Geass from this world. As its king, I am abolishing it." His eyes narrow as a new line appears in is thoughts. "And today is the day I achieve that goal."
He wasn't so Naïve as to think he could still pull of the same gambit that he had attempted twelve years ago. He might have brought peace for twelve years, but since it had been seen through, anything he tried to do to that effect would just outright fail. This time, he was planning on taking out the problem at its source. This time, All Geass would be gone from this world.
This time, nothing Geass had touched could remain.
As a person, it hurt. Now that his sister, Suzaku, Lady Kaguya and Kallen had all been affected, they are all slated for the same fate as he had prescribed for himself and C2.
Of course, there might be another option. If he could get Lloyd on board, along with his protégé, he might be able to reverse engineer that weapon Tamaki was waving around, which might save them all from destruction. Of course, that was a big if. And he has the equipment here now to take care of the problem once and for all as well.
He sighs and watches as the floor of the lift descends to the area he had arrived from. There, ten of the goons that hadn't been in the room were all pointing guns at him. One of the guns was the de-Geasser. Not that he was immortal anymore.
He smirks. "I want to ask you all something."
Most of the guards lower their weapons in confusion.
"Why don't you all just go get some coffee?" L2 says.
The ten men drop their weapons and all head to the cafeteria to get some coffee, only a faint glow to their eyes indicating that they aren't under their own control.
L2 straightens his collar with a finger and starts walking in the opposite direction of the cafeteria.
Time to end this. His smile, if anyone had been around, would have sent chill down their backs.
o-o-o-o
Suzaku was starting to have his nerves frayed by Tamaki. He seemed to be tracking Suzaku somehow, without actually being able to find him. Suzaku likened it to a dog that stopped using its nose when it was within ten feet of its prey. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Suzaku glues himself to the floor of the air duct he is currently crawling through. Tamaki's raging stomps can be heard directly above, along with a low growl that Tamaki hadn't stopped for the past five minutes.
Suzaku fervently wished that he had Gefjun disturber right about now. Jeremiah had been disabled by one, so it stood to reason that Tamaki would as well. Unless someone had installed countermeasures. Suzaku wasn't sure how far that type of prosthetics had come in the past twelve years.
Not that there was any point in wondering. Suzaku had no Gefjun disturber. Thinking about it was a moot point.
Tamaki races back the other way, and Suzaku once again stops moving and listens to the thunderous footsteps. This time, instead of moving once the steps were far enough away, he pulls out a map he had ripped off of a wall.
"If I follow this duct, then this one, I should be right near the prisoners… and a Knightmare hanger. That would be nice." He carefully folds the map up and stuffs it in his pocket.
Above him the pounding of footsteps comes again. He patiently waits for them to pass, then sighs and gets back to work.
"When this is over, I'm asking L2 for a raise." He grumbles.
With a great screech of metal, the duct in front of him is pulled out of its position. Light pours in from above, and a scarred face peers in.
"Found you, rat." Says a grinning Tamaki.